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December 2010

Imagine you’re driving a car with two of your friends as passengers. They’re both angry with another guy whom they feel ripped them off. They tell you to drive to the guy’s house. You do. You park down the street from the guy’s house. They think they see the guy who ripped them off down the street. Your friend in the passenger seat gets out of the car and you hear a series of eight gunshots. He gets back in the car and tells you to drive. You do so.

The next morning you find out that a City Councilman was shot and killed at the same time and on that same street you were on. You say nothing. In fact, you don’t say anything until you’re arrested.

Now when I look at that scenario, I don’t know how you’d end up walking free from that. Yet that’s exactly what Nicole Stewart has done. She was the driver the evening Henry Don Williams shot Councilman Matt Garcia. She sat in that vehicle while a life was taken and then drove the killers away.

Today, Solano County DA Dave Paulson is retiring. It was Paulson’s office that declined to prosecute Stewart. Fairfield Police originally arrested Stewart on MURDER, conspiracy and felony use of a firearm. She was later rearrested with lesser charges.

Paulson’s office led the public to believe Stewart would be charged as an accessory after the fact. Such a charge could’ve brought a 16-month to 3-year prison sentence. Not long enough for the person who helped facilitate Matt Garcia's murder but better than a clean walk. Later, after releasing Stewart Paulson

said, “We are not aware of any admissible evidence that proves criminal responsibility on her part.”

Really? Did they even try? Or was the plan all along to give her a walk? She was just driving these two guys around and never knew Henry Williams had a weapon? So Williams and Combs never discussed this guy that ripped Combs off? There was no conversation on the way to the house? When Williams stepped out of the car and she heard gunshots did she think he got out to light some firecrackers? And why stay silent about it? Give me a break.

It’s left the family of Matt Garcia to have to encounter this woman in public going about her life. How would you feel if you ran into the person who drove your son’s killers away in a public place?

And it begs the question that if this was the best Paulson could do in the highest profile case of his career, what kind of justice have low profile victims received?

Sometime before 9/11, I boarded a Capitol Corridor train in Suisun to go to Sacramento. A man walked up carrying what was obviously a rifle in a padded case. I heard him tell the conductor that it was a shotgun. The conductor seemed to think about it and then he took it and stored it away and let the fellow board.

After 9/11 guns were banned from trains. That all changed this week when, through efforts by the NRA and Congress, riders are now permitted to transport unloaded firearms in checked baggage aboard some Amtrak trains. Guns will not be permitted on the Capitol Corridor trains.

While on the surface this may seem absurd given the uproar the country is in over airline security and the TSA’s enhanced pat-downs, unloaded firearms in checked baggage aren’t going to make trains less safe.

What makes trains less safe is the fact that you can get on one with a loaded handgun in your pocket. There is no metal detector, no pat-down, and no no-ride list for railroad officials to check riders against. Anyone can walk up to a ticket counter, buy a ticket and board a train carrying a duffel bag containing anything.

While we’re patting down children, checking shoes, and ensuring passengers don’t take more than 3 oz. of liquid aboard planes, I’m afraid Al-Qaeda or someone else is going to bomb the hell out of our trains.

Obviously, the east coast commuter trains would be the juiciest target. Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor is the busiest railway in the country, involving 2600 trains and a quarter million passengers daily. And it would be naïve to think our enemies would overlook our own Capital Corridor trains which carried 1.6 million passengers last year.

Remember Madrid, Spain in 2004, terrorists put ten bombs on four trains that went off simultaneously killing 191 people and wounding over 2,000. Though bomb sniffing dogs are often employed when loading trains, we still remain vulnerable to this type of attack.

Or we remain vulnerable to a low tech attack. Al Qaeda doesn’t need to crash a train, blow up a train or derail one. Remember one soldier, with radical Islamic beliefs, allegedly killed 13 and wounded 30 others at Ft. Hood, Texas last year. Imagine if instead of 19 hijackers Al Qaeda put 19 such terrorists onboard trains and had them shoot people. What if they did it simultaneously, or every day?

I’m not writing this to terrify people or discourage them from riding the rails. I love the Capitol Corridor trains. It’s a quick, comfortable, affordable ride. But one doesn’t have to be a CIA analyst, anti-terrorism expert or master tactician to know that our enemy is going to attack where we’re vulnerable. And while we’ve spent billions trying to defend against another 9/11, how safe are we from a Madrid?